Craig MacTavish and Randy Gregg are the newest members of the Edmonton Oilers team Hall of Fame, joining former captains Lee Fogolin and Doug Weight, along with No. 94 Ryan Smyth and Paul Coffey’s defence partner Charlie Huddy.
MacTavish has touched all the bases. He was a three-time Stanley Cup winning centre, then team captain, then head coach, then general manager. Gregg, who earned a medical degree during his playing days, is one of only seven players who was part of all five Oiler NHL championships as one of their core defenceman. Mark Messier, Kevin Lowe, Huddy, Glenn Anderson, Jari Kurri and Grant Fuhr also have five Oiler Cup rings.
MacTavish, who succeeded Lowe as team captain in 1992, and Gregg, who played 130 playoff games, third most as an Oiler D man behind Lowe and Huddy, will be saluted Oct. 25 when Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins are in town.
MacTavish, 65, the last NHLer to play bareheaded, without a helmet, played 701 Oiler games over almost nine seasons, including 518 straight without calling in sick.
He never missed a game from Oct. 12, 1986 to Jan. 2, 1993, about six and half seasons, playing the hard, grinding minutes as the Oilers’ checking centre with a deft touch on face-offs behind the stars Wayne Gretzky and Messier. He was their best man on D zone draws, outstanding at ragging the puck on the penalty-kill along with Kelly Buchberger and when it came to working the puck along the boards, he had it down to a science.
He was the alternate captain in 1990 on their Cup win over Boston, before getting the C from Lowe. MacTavish and Jari Kurri broke up ice deep into the third OT in Game 1 starting the chain of events that led to Petr Klima’s winning shot on then Bruins’ goalie Andy Moog.
He was later head coach for eight years, running the bench in 2006 on the team’s Improbable run to the Cup final after being eighth seed going into playoffs. He was GM for two years and VP of hockey ops for five seasons.
Gregg, 68, started at U of Alberta as a 16-year-old student and was in medical school in 1975 when he started playing for the Golden Bears. During his time there he was voted Canada’s best college player, then he played on Canada’s 1980 Olympic team in Lake Placid. He jockeying games with his medical studies. He hiked off to Japan for two years after the ’80 Olympics and joined the Oilers for the ill-fated ’82 playoff loss to the Los Angeles Kings.
He was a regular on the Oiler blue-line for seven full seasons.
“He anticipates so well he can stop a play before it has even started. He is almost elegant for a man of his size,” said Lowe, Gregg’s partner in the 87 playoffs.
He stopped playing for a time in 1986, wanting to get on with his medical profession full-time but decided to keep playing. Then he planned on quitting for good after the ’87 playoffs to complete his medical residency but that year the IOC said the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary would be open to pro hockey players. Not playing for the Oilers, and with the itch to give the Olympics another shot, he was captain of the ’88 team, then rejoined the Oilers after the Olympics ended.
Gregg was overshadowed by Coffey and Lowe, also Huddy in his time as an Oiler but he was a big man with a high hockey IQ to go with his medical smarts, and he was a strong two-way defenceman. Gregg was good enough to not only win the five Cups here but he was also on Canada’s 1984 winning Canada Cup squad on the blue-line with Lowe, Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque, Larry Robinson, Doug Wilson and Huddy.
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